EDISON – The three-year battle between a church looking to develop on conservation land and local environmentalists trying to stop the project came to a conclusion on Thursday night.

The church won.

The Edison Town Council on Thursday approved giving a small parcel of land that will allow a Jehovah's Witness center to be built in one of the few areas of open space left in Central New Jersey.

The three-acre development in the Dismal Swamp is just another in a series of encroachments that will raise the risk of flooding and chip away at the last flecks of green in an urban center, environmentalists warn.

Members of the Town Council were sympathetic to their concerns, but said they had no other choice. The developer would sue, and win, to have access to the town's plot of land in the woods. The state has already given approval for the project. And it would be too expensive to buy out the developer, they said.

The town is only giving a small parcel of land so that people can drive in and out of the proposed 4,000 square feet Jehovah's Witness center. The three-acre plot itself was part of a private land deal.

The environmentalists – bundled in winter jackets because the heater in the council chambers broke – told members of the council that they didn't believe the town had done enough to prevent the project. Members of the Sierra Club and the Edison Wetlands Association haven't said whether there's anything else they can do to stop the project.

"We don't feel that you've really tried hard," said Dana Patterson, who works for the Edison Wetlands Association. "There's still an opportunity to make this happen. I don't know why you're giving up tonight. You're letting the residents of Edison down."